It has long been known that germs are spread by, among other things, hand to hand contact. Hence there's been much in the literature recently concerning the washing of hands in order to prevent the spreading of the common cold as well as other microbes. Recently, it has even been discovered that bacteria continue to live on writing implements there used by individuals. As such, writing implements can also carry microbes and therefore can be a vector for the spread of disease. Telephones are no less apt to be a vector for the spread of germs. In fact, this is even more the case since individuals breathe into telephones and deposit germs thereon. It is bad enough in one's own family environment, but the spread of germs from one stranger to another via telephone handsets of public telephones, or office telephones is equally a menace.
Many objects are sterilized. For example, hospitals use sterilization routinely for surgical instruments. Typically such sterilization occurs both chemically as well as through high-pressure high temperature steam sterilization. This results in generally sterile instruments for use in surgery. The difficulty, of course, is that such devices are expensive, cumbersome, and are therefore not practical for the widespread sterilization of more common devices.
The spread of germs via bathroom articles has been the subject of invention. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,954,407 to Andary et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,445 to Ellis, U.S. Pat. No. 4,88,4072 Ritter, U.S. Pat. No. 4,772,795 to Sakurai et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,803,364 to Ritter and U.S. Pat. No. 4,806,770 to Hylton et al. all disclose methods of sterizing toothbrucshes and dental articles using ultraviolet lamps.
Similarly U.S. Pat. No. 4,906,851 to Beasley et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,973,847 to Lackey et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,460 to Foster, Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,126,572 to Chu, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,521 to Bourgue, all disclsoe ultraviolet based toothbrush sterilizers, while U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,877 to Choi, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,547,635 to Duthei, Jr. disclose general sterilization methods and apparatus wherein microorganisms are exposed to ultraviolet light. Thus it can be seen that much work has been done with respect to the sterilization of bathroom articles. However no attention has been paid to the sterilization of other common implements, specifically telephones which can clearly carry disease generating microorganisms.
It would therefore be desirable to have a convenient, readily available method and apparatus for sterilizing telephones, specifically the telephone handset, thereby preventing the transmission of object-borne disease spreading microorganisms.